Extensive margins of imports, productivity and profitability: First evidence for manufacturing enterprises in Gemmny

This paper uses a tailor-made newly available data set for enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany to investigate for the first time the links between the extensive margins of imports (the number of imported goods and the number of countries imported from) and two dimensions of firm performance, productivity and profitability. While both extensive margins are highly positively linked with productivity, profits are not higher in firms that import more goods and from more countries This demonstrates that productivity advantages of importers are eaten up by extra costs related to buying more goods in more countries.